A video essay exploring Inside's aesthetics of authenticity and self-reflexivity via comparisons with other Netflix specials, YouTube videos, ‘metamodern autofiction’, and the classic mockumentary David Holzman’s Diary (1967). By Tom Hemingway and James MacDowell.
Full references here: https://shorturl.at/gdkN8
Music:
Eighth Grade (Anna Meredith, 2018)
Inside (Bo Burnham, 2021)
Inside: The Outtakes (Bo Burnham, 2022)
Bo Burnham: All Eyes On Me | INSTRUMENTAL COVER (Kitti Kristóf, 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3BCaNnJ7U
“Bo Burnham - Inside: 8 bit compilation” (disphing, 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jfiC8ib0wg
“The Chicken Karaoke” (Karaoke All Keys, 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_2jJg6OIig
Notes:
1. Quotations: (1) Dominic Maxwell, “Bo Burnham: Inside”, The Times (2021); (2) Matthew Dessem, “Inside, Bo Burnham’s New Special,” Slate (2021).
2. Inside in Context (Comedy Without Errors, 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHat1OlMPeY
3. David Marc, Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture (Boston: Unwin, 1989), p.13.
4. Qtd in Alex Dunbar, “What the fuck, Marc Maron”, Vice (2011).
5. Marc, Comic Visions, p.16.
6. Ian Wilkie, "Stand-up Comedy", in The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), 94-6, p.95.
7. Clips from: (1) Jenny Slate: Stage Fright (2019); (2) Jerry Before Seinfeld (2017).
8. Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018)
9. Burnham’s guesthouse representing a continuation of his onstage performance becomes important to Inside (discussed later). Inside's connection to Make Happy’s ending was acknowledged by Inside’s trailer – which implies Inside follows on directly from Make Happy's conclusion. Burnham’s trailer imagines he never exited this space into the real life represented by his partner and dog. This meta-text thus arguably frames the whole of Inside as in some sense a continuation of Burnham’s onstage performance – an issue to which we’ll return.
10. Dessem, “Inside".
11. Lili Loofbourow, “The Problem With Bo Burnham’s Inside”, Slate (2021), http://bitly.ws/BdLR
12. Clips from: (1) Late Night With Seth Myers (2020); (2) Staged (2020); (3) Nowhere to Go (Quarantine Love) (Snow Tha Product, 2020).
13. Clips from: (1) Reacting To The Reaction Of The Reaction... (Mr Beast, 2016): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqUvnLPvbrM; (2) I REACT TO PEWDIEPIE REACTING TO JACKSEPTICEYE (JackSepticeye, 2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbz1k7G7rws. Thanks to Patrick Maslin for these references.
14. Rachel Berryman & Misha Kavka, "Crying on YouTube: Vlogs, self-exposure and the productivity of negative affect." Convergence 24, no. 1 (2018): 85-98, p.85.
15. Berryman & Kavka, "Crying”, p.85.
16. So Sorry. (Logan Paul, 2018).
17. Chronicle of a Summer (Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, 1961).
18. Louise Spence and Vinicius Navarro. Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), p.31. Kevin B. Lee’s audiovisual essay “Diary on David Holzman Part 1" (2011) also links David Holzman’s Diary and YouTube, yet reaches different conclusions about the complexity of the latter; see: https://vimeo.com/25038941.
19. YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticity for Fun and Profit (Lindsay Ellis, 2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJEtCvb2Kw
20. The channel LonelyGirl15 famously presented itself as a real teenager’s confessional vlog, while in fact being a scripted, professionally-acted web-drama.
21. Clips from: (1) The Grift Economy (Thought Slime, 2021): http://bitly.ws/BSUZ; (2) Vlogs and the Hyperreal (Folding Ideas, 2017): http://bitly.ws/BSUV
22. Zadie Smith, "Fail Better" The Guardian (13 January, 2007), 4.
23. Jordan Peterson (ContraPoints, 2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LqZdkkBDas
24. Carmen Bonasera, “Estrangement, Performativity, and Empathy in Bo Burnham’s Inside (2021)”, Between, 12: 23 (2022), 94-116, p. 94.
25. Unnamed works: Marilyn Monroe (Andy Warhol, 1967); I shop therefore I am (Barbara Kruger, 1990); What's the point of it? (Martin Creed, 2014).
26. Bonasera, “Estrangement”, p.112.
27. Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker (2010) “Notes on Metamodernism”, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, vol. 2, pp.2 & 5. For other work on Inside and metamodernism, see: Tom Drayton, "Should I Be Joking in a Time Like This?", Medium (2021): http://bitly.ws/BdLz; and "Bo Burnham & Metamodernism" (Vivian Strange, 2022): http://bitly.ws/BdLv
28. Alison Gibbons, "Contemporary autofiction and metamodern affect," in Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth after Postmodernism, eds. Alison Gibbons, Robin van den Akker, Timotheus Vermeulen (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017): 117-130, p.128. Incidentally, autofiction on YouTube demands study in its own right!
29. Gibbons, "Contemporary”, p.121.
30. Gibbons, "Contemporary”, p.130.
31. Loofbourow, “The Problem”.
32. “‘It was all real’ another message from Bo”, Reddit: http://bitly.ws/B8qw
33. Gibbons, "Contemporary”, p.128.